The Kinetoscope

A moving picture made by Edison's laboratory, watched alone through a peephole in a box. Nearly every ingredient of cinema was already in place here — the only thing missing was sharing the darkness with other people. The two films placed here are among the earliest experiments shot in that laboratory. One, from 1891, shows an assistant exercising. The other, from January 7, 1894, shows a colleague, Fred Ott, sneezing. Some of the first moving images humans ever shot were neither records nor stories — they were the tinkering of people who simply wanted to see motion itself. Both are held by the Library of Congress.